Magic in the family

Originally a trapeze artist, Aurélia Thierrée also employs her dancing, acting and illusionist skills
Keith Watson|Metro10 April 2012

Aurélia Thierrée has been living inside her own dream for the past 18 months. And she's having such a good time, she doesn't want to wake up.

The granddaughter of Charlie Chaplin - there, that's got that bit out of the way - has been touring the world as the star of Aurélia's Oratorio, a magical slice of theatrical trickery that plays like her own personal dreamscape. But, and this is where psychoanalysts could have a field day, the show has been put together by her mother.

'I know, it's pretty incredible that we can work on such a show together,' laughs Thierrée. 'We hadn't done it since I was a child and it could have been a disaster. But I made a grown-up decision to work with her and when there's a common desire to do something, you can make it work.

'It's turned out to be a huge blessing to work with someone you know so well. And it helps that I really like what she does.'

Her mother, Victoria Thierrée Chaplin, is a renowned pioneer of new circus, the co-founder of groundbreaking companies Cirque Imaginaire and Cirque Invisible. But, even though Aurélia Thierrée originally trained on the trapeze, circus hardly captures the essence of Aurélia's Oratorio, a detailed flight of the imagination that requires its star to call on a dizzying range of skills.

Shedding skins from actress to dancer, aerialist to illusionist, Thierrée turns in a technical tour-deforce that adds up to more than the sum of its parts, thanks to the sense of childlike wonder she brings to a performance that, in lesser hands, could become twee. But she plays down the versatility it demands.

'Oh, I can fake my way around a lot. I've done a little bit of everything over the years, so I just put the different skills to use.

And I'm lucky to be working with a dancer, Timothy Harling, who's so good he can cover for me when I go wrong.'

Broken down to its bare bones, Aurélia's Oratorio is essentially a series of set-pieces, or 'acts' as

Thierrée prefers to call them, which melt into a stream of consciousness. It helps if you go with the surreal flow rather than getting hung up on looking for a narrative, although Thierrée insists there is a story bubbling below the surface.

'My theory at the beginning was that, like the logic of dreams, even if things don't make any sense, you go along with it. You don't question things while you're dreaming.

'The title came about simply because we liked the sound of Aurélia and Oratorio together. But then we were struck by the idea that everyone has their own secret oratorio - a piece of music that you connect with on a totally personal level. The idea is to play around with things, particularly our perceptions.'

Credited as director and designer, Victoria Thierrée Chaplin is the muse behind the project and there are times when Aurélia shrugs in frustration at a question.

'She should answer this really, but from the beginning my parents decided to never do interviews. I don't know why, it was just part of their thing.'

Although she might be baffled by that, Thierrée is happy to place implicit faith in her mother's working methods. 'Victoria works in a very instinctive way and the story really only comes out in the end. She tells me things like "there's a train that's going to go through your stomach" and I have to trust her that it will work.'

That it does is down to reassuringly low-tech methods that call on old-school skills with handmade models and lots of cardboard - not forgetting toy cows - an approach that lends a timeless air to a deceptively sophisticated spectacle. There may not be a bowler hat in sight but the sense of comical wonder is straight from the heart of the Chaplin tradition.

Aurélia's Oratorio, Mar 30 to Apr 16, Lyric Hammersmith, King Street W6, Mon to Sat 7.30pm, £12 to £20. Tel: 0870 243 9000. Tube: Hammersmith

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